


Ride

by LilTheHunger



Category: RideBack
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 20:38:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilTheHunger/pseuds/LilTheHunger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He stood against the rear wall of the auditorium in a black coat, glaring at her.  She was not certain he was capable of simply staring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ride

Rin spotted him only after the performance -- and good thing, too, because the sight of him might have distracted her from Katerin's grand jete.  She would have noticed him if he'd sat in any of the front five rows, which meant he'd watched from the balcony -- or the back.  That sounded like him.

Katerin came off the stage glowing, and because Rin had seen the whole performance she was able to hug the girl and praise her with all the effusive honesty that her skill deserved.  It still felt strange to have students.  To have her own school.  The waitlist was a year deep, she had more money than she'd ever imagined, and she was happy again, more or less.  Students like Katerin, a truly gifted dancer who had come all the way from Russia to study with Rin -- the GGP had made _some_ things easier -- helped her find contentment with the life she had now.  Even if it was not the life she'd imagined for herself, it would do.

But there across the audience, spotted while she took her bow as the choreographer:  Kiefer.  He was impossible to miss, really, with his old-man's hair and eyes that had once seemed not quite human to her.  He stood against the rear wall of the auditorium in a black coat, glaring at her.  She was not certain he was capable of simply _staring_.  (There was a space around him, despite the press of the crowd as people filed out.  Everyone noticed his strangeness.  She wondered if that ever bothered him.)

She went through the usual after-show routine, making sure the dancers were taking care of themselves and their costumes, coddling their souls if they needed it, greeting their benefactors and critics with equal aplomb.  Too much to do to allow thought.  But two hours after the show ended, she walked out of the stage exit in a trenchcoat, a warm hat on her head against the chilly early-winter air, and found him waiting for her.

There were only a few stagehands nearby, milling and talking after the show.  They paid no attention; there was no one to overhear.  (No one that she could see.  There were probably government spies, but those were no matter.)  Rin stopped a few feet away from him. 

"You don't ride anymore," Kiefer said by way of greeting, as if he had not spent the past two years remaking the world.  He was part of the GGP now, fixing the mess that Kallenbach had made. She read about him in the papers now and again.

"Fuego's dead," she replied.  Not even Okakura had been able to repair her, after Ueno Park.  All four of her motors had burned to slag for Suzuri's memorial dance.  A fitting ending for a beautiful vehicle.

"My condolences," he said, and meant it.  She heard that in his voice, saw actual sorrow in his eyes.  Something inside her that had been tensed, relaxed.  "Does the dancing help?"

It might have, if Rin had actually been the one dancing.  But returning to the stage after a three-year absence -- the rehabilitation to her tendon had taken longer than expected -- was an impossibility to her.  She could have trained ferociously and made it back to the level she'd been at before the injury, but her heart would not allow her to settle for merely "as good as".

Her silence was his answer.  He smiled in that ever-so-slightly cruel way she remembered -- she was not certain he had a gentler smile -- but then stepped closer.  From the pocket of his coat he pulled something, and her belly and calves and the back of her throat all clenched at the sight of it.  A black link band.

"It isn't Fuego," he said.  "Fuego was special.  But perhaps you may take some comfort from this.  It's parked out front."  And he held it out to her.

Rin stared at it.  At him.

She was surprised to realize she did not want the rideback.

Her hand rose, though, almost of its own volition.  Her fingers brushed the leather band, and she felt a pang of -- something.  Nostalgia, maybe.  Not desire.  Not for the bike.

She took Kiefer's hand.  His smile vanished, and she sensed in him that stillness which precedes violence.  She supposed he did not often get touched for peaceful purposes.  But when she said, "Come with me," the tension faded, replaced by curiosity.  When she tugged his hand, turning to walk toward home, he came readily.

Once inside the door of her apartment, she took his coat, and hung it alongside hers.  The apartment was larger than most in Tokyo; one of the few indulgences she'd allowed herself.  She was not a materialistic woman, but she liked her space.  She liked to feel free.  So she turned to Kiefer, right there in the foyer, and unbuttoned her blouse.

He watched until she was naked, unmoving, nothing in those strange eyes of his that she could read.  She offered him her hand and he gazed at it for a long moment.  Under other circumstances, his wariness might have amused her.

"You're not getting much time to ride, either, these days," she said gently, commiserating.  She had seen that at once, the brooding unhappiness in him.  He was an important man now, a government official, but he had been born to dance.  Without a rideback, he had no outlet for his soul.

His face softened in a way she had never seen before.  No, she had:  when he was riding.  That longing, that anticipation of joy.  She smiled, stepping back toward the stairs that led up to her bedroom, her hand still extended, a beckoning _adagio_.  This time, knowing what she offered, he came.

They did not make it up the stairs.  Kiefer took her hand, then her waist, quickly moving so that their bodies touched; his dance was all force and control.  She swayed to meet him, a bending reed to his river, encouraging him to touch, to explore, to go slow.  A lesser man might have ignored these cues, but not Kiefer.  At once he adjusted himself to match her, his caresses growing slower, more intent, _allonge_.  (The woman, not the man, always controls the dance.)  Then he lifted her, visibly marveling at her smallness, and set her down on the carpeted stairs so that he could undress.  Beneath his clothing he was all lean muscle and scars -- terrible scars; the kind that spoke of multiple brushes with death.  He held still when he was done, letting her see him, unashamed and plain in his wanting of her.  She opened her legs and reached for him, and he drifted down onto her like snow.

She had expected pain, speed, roughness.  Instead he worked a gentle, steady rhythm within her while his free hand -- the other held her in place so that the carpet would not chafe -- traced the slight curve of her hip and the hollow of her waist, cupped and massaged the swell of her breast.  He did not attempt to kiss her.  Indeed, his eyes stayed on hers throughout, never looking away.  Yes, a good dance required concentration and close attention to one's partner. 

And he _was_ a good partner -- oh, so good.  The steadiness of his thrusts kept perfect 4/4 time.  The heat built in her body with the steady inexorability of Beethoven's _Allegretto_.  She let her head fall back, closing her eyes with the crescendo, and hoping when she shuddered through it that he did not climax too, because it would be too soon.  She had only just warmed up.  He did make a soft, tight sound when she clenched around him -- the first either of them had made.  Then he cupped the back of her head with his free hand, rested his head on her shoulder, and swayed in perfect time with her:  deepening his movements when she flexed muscles within herself to demand it, angling gentle strokes upward to keep her on the edge of pleasure.  They rode each other as only two who have known the bliss of flight can do.  There was nothing in her mind but the _ostinato_ of their movements, no music in her ears save delicate wet sounds and soft fevered panting.  She curled her legs around his hips when the finale came and sighed in pure relief as he strained into her, his whole body uncurling, his strange eyes fluttering shut. He trembled with the power of his own release.

He felt just like Fuego, there between her legs.

While the sweat cooled, he stayed inside her for awhile, stroking her legs, her arms, plainly reluctant to let go.  When at last he was forced to withdraw, he made another little sound as he did so, as though it hurt to no longer be linked to her body.  He slumped and rested his head on her small breasts for a moment, and Rin folded her arms around his shoulders, stroking his old-man's hair.  (He had let it grow longer, because he wasn't a soldier anymore.  She was amazed by its softness.)  Then, at last, he sighed and rose, offering a hand to help her up. 

They dressed in silence.  She watched him as she did so, noting that he did not look at her.  When she touched his shoulder, he went still under her hand, though with a different kind of tension this time.

"Will you come see me again?" she asked. He turned to her at once, searching her face.  She wondered how she could ever have thought of his eyes as inhuman.

But he smiled again -- without cruelty, for once -- and said, "How often may I come?"

Rin smiled.  "As often as you need."

He gazed at her for a long, hungry moment, and she knew he would be back within the week.

"Rin Ogata," he said.  It was reverent and grateful, almost a prayer.  Then he held up his hand.  A request.  When she gave him her own, he bent and kissed the back of it, then stroked away the mark of his own kiss with his thumb.  (She shivered at this.  A soldier, even a former one, should not have such silken hands.)

He left, then, and she locked the door, and went upstairs to take a shower.  Then she went to bed, and for the first time in two years, she did not dream of dancing.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the lack of accents, etc., on the non-English words -- I couldn't figure out how to make them work. Also, apologies if I've mangled any of the language of classical music or ballet. It's been a very long time since my after-school ballet lessons and high-school orchestra membership. Oh, and I've only seen the English dub of the anime -- didn't even know there was a manga 'til recently. So please excuse any anime-only-based discrepancies with canon.


End file.
